"the People's Paths!" Cherokee News Path - $10,000 Donation Helps Preserve

***"The Cherokee Nation recently contributed $10,000 to the Will Rogers Memorial. The funds will be used to repair the house where Rogers was born."***

TAHLEQUAH, OK - In an effort to help preserve the life and legacy of the Cherokee Kid, Will Rogers, the Cherokee Nation recently contributed $10,000 to the Will Rogers Memorial.

“Will Rogers was a great Cherokee and was proud of his Indian heritage. He was once quoted as saying, ‘I am a Cherokee and it's the proudest little possession I ever hope to have.’ This man continues to inspire many today to see the world in a different light,” said Chad Smith, Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. “The Cherokee Nation is proud to help support the Will Rogers Memorial so that his work will live on.”

William Penn Adair Rogers is noted as being first a Cherokee Indian, a cowboy, a national figure and a legend. Rogers was born in 1879 near Oolagah to Clement Vann Rogers, a Cherokee senator and judge who helped to write the Oklahoma Constitution, and Mary America Schrimsher Rogers, a descendant of a Cherokee chief. Rogers learned to rope and ride on his family’s ranch.

As the years passed, Will Rogers’ skills with a rope developed into a talent that would list him in the Guinness Book of Records, and it won him jobs trick roping in wild-west shows and on the variety show stages where his wit and humor delighted audiences even more than his expert roping. Rogers would ultimately become recognized as being a very well-versed and smart philosopher by telling the truth in a simplistic manner that anyone could understand. In his lifetime, Rogers would star on Broadway, make 71 movies during the 1920’s and 1930’s, become a popular broadcaster, a writer and humanitarian, while never leaving behind his Indian Territory roots and always being known as the “Cherokee Kid.”

The Will Rogers Memorial opened in 1938 and is spread across 20 acres that Rogers purchased in 1911 and was his planned retirement home site. However, after his untimely death, the land and parts of the collection were donated by his widow and children.

Today the museum features a host of exhibits that include Will Rogers’ artifacts, memorabilia, photographs, a research library and several other attractions that highlight the life of Will Rogers and the contributions that he made to society.

“On behalf of the members and staff of the Will Rogers Memorial Commission, I extend our warmest appreciation to the great people of the Cherokee Nation for their magnificently generous gift,” said Steven Gragert, Will Rogers Memorial Museum Director.

According to Gragert, the funds will be used to replace the shake-shingle roof of the house in which Will Rogers was born. “The construction work is a further major step in our commitment to restore this historical treasure,” said Gragert. “This contribution builds on previous Cherokee Nation gifts that have enabled us to make significant progress in preservation of the Will Rogers Birthplace House. ‘My folks are Cherokees,’ Will once told a national radio audience, ‘and I am very proud of the fact.’ We understand well his pride.”